Kilmar Abrego Garcia arrives with his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura in December.Alex Wong/Getty
The Department of Homeland Security’s complaint about being under a gag order on Saturday in its case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump administration illegally deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador earlier this year, likely violated the court order.
Tricia McLaughlin, the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the DHS, said that Abrego Garcia being able to make viral TikTok posts was unfair in a rant on X: “American justice ceases to function when its arbiters silence law enforcement and give megaphones to those who oppose our legal system.”
But this “gag order” isn’t specific to Abrego Garcia’s case. As a Saturday court filing states, local criminal rule in the Middle District of Tennessee already blocks DOJ and DHS employees from making extrajudicial remarks that will ‘have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing” a defendant’s right to a fair trial. In other words, it is not politically motivated.
McLaughlin’s post boosted another post calling Abrego Garcia an “MS-13 terrorist.” The Trump administration has accused Abrego Garcia of being a member of MS-13, which a federal judge has ruled as unfounded.
“For the Court to find that Abrego is member of or in affiliation with MS-13, it would have to make so many inferences from the Government’s proffered evidence in its favor that such conclusion would border on fanciful,” the district judge wrote in July.
Earlier this month, Abrego Garcia’s defense team accused the US government of violating the court order, citing that Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino, who has overseen the immigration raids in Los Angeles and Chicago, called Abrego Garcia an “alien smuggler,” “wife beater,” and an “MS-13 gang member” on national news.
Abrego Garcia has no criminal record, yet the attempts to justify his deportation have continued for months.
Abrego Garcia was deported to the Salvadoran Terrorism Confinement Center in March, a prison that Mother Jones and other media organizations have reported on as inflicting torture, due to “an administrative error.” Following a court order and public backlash, the Trump administration brought him back to the US in June—but issued an arrest warrant against him on human smuggling charges in Tennessee.
Abrego Garcia has rejected the accusations and said that prosecutors were vindictively targeting him. A federal judge found that he has sufficient evidence to hold a hearing on the issue, which is scheduled to take place in late January.
Abrego Garcia’s case demonstrates that the Trump administration is pursuing policies such that no immigrant living in the country can feel safe. As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote earlier this month, “Every disturbing news report about a wrongful deportation or military-style raid of an apartment building should come as a reminder that the US government is using its prosecutorial discretion—it is choosing—to normalize casual cruelty and overt racism. And it’s doing so ostensibly in the name of “protecting” the American people.”
